email me: chris@fiddlingaround.co.uk
Info on various fiddle styles at fiddlingaround.co.uk:
A roundup of what's new on the site, and what I'm up to at the moment.
December 2012
ROCK VIOLIN BOOK
Having completed "Exploring Jazz Violin" for Schott last year, I immediately started work on "Discovering Rock Violin", which looks at almost every aspect of rock violin playing; rhythm playing; working with chord sequences, with singers and with soloists; creating a hook line; creating a solo; rock vibrato, and artificial feedback. I went into different sub-genres including folk rock, prog rock, jazz rock, country rock, hard rock and metal. All the way through I refer to the work of differerent violinists- 150 in all (yes, count them!), and I interviewed many of them. The ones I talked to range from the hero of my youth, Geoff Richardon of Caravan ( I was big into prog in the 70's!) to some amazing American players such as Mark Wood, Joe Deninzon and Tracy Silverman.
I wrote a heap of tunes illustrating the different techniques and styles, and had a great time recording them with a bunch of fabulous musos.
The book comes out early 2012, and I'll be launching it with a double workshop at the London Fiddle Convention on 19th Feb
WHAT'S NEW ON THE SITE?
Last year I added the Latin Violin and Canadian Fiddle pages, and most recently Texas Swing Fiddle, based mostly on an article I wrote for Fiddle On Magazine. Next up should be a page on Country Fiddle.
I've also added a heap of reviews, mostly of fiddle books, but also of some CD's. These are linked to Amazon, so if you go from my page to Amazon and actually buy the product (or indeed, any product!), I get a small percentage. The few cents from each sale isn't goung to make me rich, but it helps to pay the running costs of the site.
The average hit rate continues to rise on the site overall; the total hits for this year will reach 1.5 million!
GIGS
The best gigs of this year included the Marlborough Jazz Festival, where The Kremlinaires yet again went down a storm, and a two week cruise to the Canary Islands with The Brockovich Country band. Who wouldn't enjoy that.
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Jan 2011
ROCK VIOLIN BOOK
For the last six months I've been working on a book for Schott, ""Exploring Jazz Violin" . This will be a pretty comprehensive introduction to almost everything you need to know to learn to play jazz, from swing bowing to embellishing and interpreting a melody, using pentatonic, blues and bebop scales. It looks in detail at how to make sense of a chord sequence; how to stay carefully inside the chords, how to stretch them and finally to recklessly ignore them. It looks at the work of some of the great violinists- Grappelli, Stuff Smith, Joe Venuti and Jean-luc Ponty. I contacted lots of jazz violinists whilst writing the book- among the many people who helped me was none other than Jean Luc Ponty himself. There's a whole heap of great licks "in the style of" these players. I also look at some of the different sub-genres of jazz violin; swing, gypsy jazz, bebop, modal, latin and so on. There's a backing cd which I've just recorded with some great players. The book should be out around the end of the year.
WHAT'S NEW ON THE SITE?
Last year I managed to get up some new pages- on Polish, Baltic and gypsy fiddle. Rock violin is something I've been working on for quite a while; there was a chapter on it on The Fiddle Handbook, and my last piece for Fiddle On magazine was on this subject. I've finally uploaded a page on my site on rock violin- something otherwise pretty well ignored on the web. There's plenty of room to expand this section in the future. Over the next month I plan to add a page on Latin Violin (having been inspired Sam Bardfeld's excellent book), and on Canadian fiddle (numerous Canadian have contacted me over the years complaining that their great nation was being woefully underrepresented!)
The site as a whole continues to get a huge number of hits- on average around 3,000 a day!
RECORDINGS
My Soviet Swing band The Kremlinaires has recorded a new album, which should be out late August or September, including such titles as Transylvania 6500, There's a riot goin on (In Gulag no 9),The Ghost of Uncle Joe, and Rock the Kremlin. How could you not buy it!
GIGS
We had some excellent Kremlinaires gigs this year including Iford Manor and the Marlborough Jazz festival (some youtube footage of this has now been posted). With Carmina I did Trowbridge folk festival, and I've been doing some gigs with the classic British rock band The Quireboys.
CHRIS HAIGH is a fiddle player and fiddle teacher based in London:
